For those unaware, Outside In Music is proud to announce the March 10th, 2023 release of Other Side, the stunning sophomore statement from vocalist Danielle Wertz.

Wistful and highly expressive, this daring enterprise is both an immersive sensory experience and a polished showcase of Wertz’s seasoned and unique artistry. Fearless while navigating new landscapes, Wertz brings our most existential questions to the forefront, creating a musical work that is hypnotic, impassioned and familiar at once.

Alongside a visceral cast of esteemed collaborators including Javier Santiago on piano, organ, rhodes and synthesizers, Owen Clapp on bass, Evan Hyde on drums and percussion, Keith Ganz on both electric and acoustic guitar and Sam Priven on alto saxophone, Wertz braves essential questions of the human experience with nuanced expression.

The final output showcases Wertz’s preeminent treatment of contemporary instrumentation, where her voice stretches across a vast array of channels within the jazz idiom.

1. April 2020
2. Spring is Here
3. Rest Your Head (One for Natalie)
4. Hall of Champions
5. A Sunday Kind of Love
6. when the walls crumble, we return
7. I Have Dreamed / Dreamsville
8. Turn In
9. Cloud Shaped Thoughts
10. Other Side

This sincere, heartfelt and genuinely-organic new recording opens with the veritably ethereal April 2020 and the crystalline Spring is Here and backs those up seamlessly with the quietly confident rhythms within Rest Your Head (One for Natalie), the melodic hop-skip of Hall of Champions, and the languishing A Sunday Kind of Love.

Up next is the upbeat, finger-snapping swing of when the walls crumble, we return and the atmopsheric duo medley I Have Dreamed / Dreamsville, and they are in turn followed by one of my own personal favorites here, the softly tangible Turn In, the recording rounding out on the pure gossamer of Cloud Shaped Thoughts, coming to a close on the peacefully reticent Other Side.

After being named a 2015 Thelonious Monk International Jazz Vocals competition semi-finalist, Wertz released her impressive 2017 debut Intertwined in collaboration with visionary Israeli pianist Tal Cohen. This buoyant enterprise celebrates Wertz’s aptitude for storytelling over eight expansive and highly melodic tunes.

With Intertwined surfacing, the New York City-based artist continued to fortify her reputation as a distinguished jazz contemporary, placing 2nd in the Ella Fitzgerald Jazz Vocal Competition, then 3rd in the Mid-Atlantic Jazz Vocal Competition in the same year of her debut release. Intertwined set the stage for Wertz’s savvy approach to jazz composition, exhibiting her reverence for the art form through cutting-edge and dexterous arrangements.

Evident from her early marks, Danielle Wertz has a sensational ability to transform abstract feeling into sound. Other Side represents a continued exploration of this craft, an invitation for listeners to indulge in something complex and authentic within a personal, emotional realm. After the world crumbled in 2020, Wertz chose to abandon the straight ahead collection of music she planned to record that year.

Embracing the turbulent nature of the pandemic, she felt strongly that the music she put out should reflect the inward evolving she was experiencing. In effect, Other Side is a musical recount of internal chaos, as Wertz paraphrases, as well as a testament to the age-old philosophy that our greatest ideas, and perhaps most profound, are born from introspection and solitude.

I produced this album as I untangled my internal world, and this music recounts that chaos. It recounts the anger, the unraveling, the questions, and even some answers. May this music inspire you to turn toward yourself, to look inward, to accept the chaos and the anger, to find ease in the unraveling and to trust that if you stay the course, you will emerge transformed on the Other Side, Wertz shares.

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